Teresa Walsh, the council's director of environment, said untaxed and uninsured vehicles are being parked on residential streets, waste ground, car parks and at roadsides across the country and simply abandoned.

She added: "The scrap value of vehicles has fallen of late due to worldwide market forces and the temptation is all too great to dump them or pass them on to unauthorised breakers of back street garages." Peter Kinsella, a director of the West Link Recovery Service, said there is little financial incentive for recovery trucks to pick up end-of-life cars and bring them to centres.